Emmit came over and tapped Jamison’s shoulder.
“Hey, let me chat with you for a second before you all head out,” Emmit said.
“Okay,” Jamison agreed. He knew what Emmit wanted. “I’ll meet you two by your car,” he said to Kerry. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Kerry nodded and walked off holding Tyrian’s hand after saying good-bye to Emmit and Clara.
“Pump came through clean,” Emmit said after looking around to make sure no one was in earshot.
“I told you—my guy did one and couldn’t find anything on Dax. I guess—”
“Hold on—it came through clean, but then we got a break.”
“You got something on him?”
“Humpf.” Emmit looked around again and stepped in closer to Jamison. “Like I told you, we all have secrets.”
“What did you get on him?”
“Dax Thomas has herpes.” Emmit’s index finger dug into Jamison’s shoulder with each word.
“Herpes?” Jamison repeated as he drank in the information. He hadn’t really decided yet what he’d do if something came out of Emmit’s pump. If he really wanted to stop Dax or just get the kid to lay off. Pumps had a way of getting out of control. He’d seen people’s lives ruined. Seemingly innocent front-page news stories about married Secret Service agents sleeping with underage girls in Colombia looked like commonplace news stories to the public, but insiders knew it was just likely a caper consciously produced to collect damages for some intimate infraction that would likely never bubble to the surface. It was ugly.
“How’d you find out?”
“His ex-girlfriend came to my guy after he slipped her some pictures of Dax with some new girl he met online.” Emmit laughed. “That’ll do it.”
“But I don’t get it. Millions of people have herpes, Emmit,” Jamison said. “How’s that going to get him in the pocket?”
Emmit began to whisper. “Because the ex-girlfriend didn’t know Dax had herpes until she got it from him. And the new girlfriend had no idea. The beauty of online dating.”
“I don’t know—”
“Look, Dax is young, single, he has a little bit of money and his face on television. There’s no way he wants this to get out,” Emmit pointed out as Jamison weighed the information. The danger in pushing someone based upon this kind of information was that sometimes the person didn’t care about the information being released. Sometimes they went ahead to their wives about their porn addictions and male mistresses. Checked into a sex clinic and then came out singing like a free bird. Singing loud and long notes.
“It’s risky. You know it.”
“No, what’s risky, youngblood, is you letting this cat continue to keep his foot lodged in your ass. How’s the baby?”
Jamison didn’t respond. This was a jab about the pictures from the hospital. Dax had covered that too. He came to the office with a camera crew and hard questions. Made Jamison look like a fool.
“And that’s just the small stuff, Jamison,” Emmit said. “What do you think he’ll do when he runs out of parlor shit?”
“What if we can’t pin it on him? If this woman’s just some angry ex?”
“We have pill bottles. Herpes medication with his name on it.”
Jamison let out a deep breath.
“You’re running with the big boys right now,” Emmit said, sensing Jamison’s uneasiness. “This is what we do. You can’t be powerful if you don’t know how to keep power, son.”
Jamison nodded.
Emmit stepped back and searched Jamison’s face for approval.
“I’ll have my guy talk to him,” Emmit said when he saw the lines in Jamison’s forehead soften. “Just a conversation. See where he’s coming from.”
Jamison looked away. Buried his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. Let’s just wait on that.”
Emmit looked unsurprised but still a little annoyed. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”
And just like that the brothers departed like strangers. One walked in one direction; the other in another.
Kerry was waiting for Jamison outside of her car. The motor was running though. Tyrian was inside the backseat watching a movie on his iPad.
“What did he want?” Kerry asked Jamison, nodding to the position on the knoll where he had been talking to Emmit.
“Just some frat stuff.”
Kerry looked like she’d just smelled something rotten.
“Why are you always like that about Emmit?” Jamison asked.
“Come on, my mother’s friends with his wife; I know who he is,” Kerry said. “And it’s nothing to play with.” She locked her eyes on Jamison. “I keep trying to tell you.”
“Well, there’s nothing for you to worry about, so you can stop with the ugly mug.”
“I’m not worried about anything. You’re not mine to worry about,” Kerry said coolly with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Okay. I’m glad you realize that,” Jamison answered patronizingly to point out her unnecessary tone.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Jamison looked at Tyrian locked in the air-conditioned car with his movie. The sun was high and its heat seemed to be especially cruel on the treeless course.
“Well,” he started and spoke slowly as if he was picking every word before he used it. “Val and I are holding a press conference this week.”
“Another one? You guys are like celebrities,” Kerry shot with a flat smile, though she was in a deep battle about what she knew was coming next. She’d seen the pictures from the hospital like everyone else. They confirmed what she’d already thought. She’d cried anyway. Cried hard into Marcy’s chest. She kept repeating that she was over Jamison, so she didn’t know why this was stinging so badly.
“Yes. Another one.”
“Why?” Kerry asked this thinking maybe he’d say something other than what she knew was to come next.
“She’s pregnant.” Jamison actually felt a little relief letting that out. Maybe he was really hearing it for the first time. Sometimes people keep secrets from others because they really want to keep the secrets from themselves. Maybe this was one of those times.
Kerry leaned against the car. “So, you’re having a baby,” she said. “I knew it.” Kerry looked up and set her eyes on a few clumps of clouds gathering over the parking lot. “So, what’s this? Why are you telling me?”
“Well, I was thinking I should tell you before I told anyone else . . . myself.”
“Why?” Kerry worked hard to see the clouds as she forced so many tears back down.
“Because you’re the mother of my child and I want you to hear it from my mouth. I wanted to tell you earlier, but it didn’t work out that way,” Jamison said.
“You got married without telling me.” Kerry looked at him.
“That was a mistake. I told you. You weren’t supposed to—”
“But I did. So—”
“Kerry, stop trying to . . . hurt me.”
“Trying to hurt you?” Kerry laughed a little. “You married your assistant and now you’re having a baby and you say I’m trying to hurt you?”
“We’re divorced,” Jamison pointed out, though he’d regret it later.
“Exactly, so why are you telling me all of this? You’re the one who told me it was your business and not mine.”
“I want to take Tyrian out for ice cream tomorrow,” Jamison said. “Talk to him. Let him know what’s going on before he hears it from someone else.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Fine.”
“So, I can take him?”
“He’s your son,” Kerry said. “You don’t expect me to tell him, do you?”
The two stood there for a second and listened to the boom from the movie on the iPad vibrate through the car.
Jamison saw how red Kerry’s eyes were getting. Now, his heart was stinging, too. Through all of their pain, their missed sig
nals and misfires, he’d never wanted to see her cry. His best friend had told him it was because Kerry was his first love and his first wife.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
A tear fell. Kerry made sure it was wiped away so quickly maybe even God hadn’t noticed.
“It’s not that,” she said so faintly. “It’s not what you’re thinking. That I’m jeal—”
“No, I get it,” Jamison said. “It’s not about you wanting me or anything. I know you don’t want me.” He looked into her eyes. “Right?”
She didn’t respond.
“It’s about what I’d feel if my first wife got married. Had a baby. I’d be feeling like you were once mine,” Jamison said.
They looked at each other and Jamison added, “And that would hurt me. So, I’m sorry.”
Kerry wiped away a few more tears and then perked up to restore her composure.
“Well, okay,” she said, reaching for her door handle in a quick decision that the conversation was over. “And can you bring him home from camp? I have some things to do at the center tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Jamison answered.
“Cool.” She paused. “And, hey, I was also wondering what you were going to do about Ras.”
“Do?”
“You’re going to help him, right?”
“I don’t know,” Jamison said. “It’s not looking too good for him.”
“Exactly, and that’s why he needs you. You have power. You have friends.”
“Kerry, it’s not that simple, and you know it. You know it better than anyone else.”
“You got into politics because you wanted to make a change for people. A real change. Ras wants to do the same thing. And I know you both are capable of that. That’s why people love you. That’s why people voted for you.”
“I know, but that’s not what’ll keep me in office.”
“You can’t serve two masters, Jamison. I know those guys like Emmit. I grew up around them. They’re businessmen. Not community men. Don’t get confused. What they give, they give because of what they can get from it. And when there’s nothing to get, they’ll crush you,” Kerry said soberly. Her family had a long history of doing big business in Atlanta. Her granduncle helped start Atlanta Life, an African-American-owned insurance company that had dominated for decades and still remained the nation’s most wealthy black-owned insurance company. Jamison had used her family’s connections to get his lawn care business going. He’d done the work that made the money, but she’d done the networking that made the work. And in that network, loyalty was everything, but you had to know where the loyalty was.
“Nobody’s trying to crush me,” Jamison said.
“Not yet.”
On his way back home, as Jamison rode with the top down and the radio off so he could think about what Kerry had said about Ras, he received a call from someone who’s name on the caller ID on the dashboard in his car made him smile. It was Damien, Marcy’s husband and his favorite fraternity brother from college. Like their wives, the men’s differences in upbringing meant they were unlikely friends but their bond through the fraternity was so tight the two had been through enough together to really consider each other brothers. It was Damien who’d helped Jamison through his divorce from Kerry, his affair with Coreen and now it was Damien who came to lend honest words about the situation he saw unfolding online with Val. It had been his idea that Jamison take Val out of the house and try to actually sit and have a conversation with her that went beyond angry words and accusations. When he’d met up with Jamison for a drink after the pictures of Val from the hospital hit the local news stations, he had explained to his brother that he had to set his feelings aside and do what was right to keep some peace until his child was born.
“You must need some money,” Jamison charged, answering the phone.
“I sure do. Like a million dollars,” Damien joked. “I swear Marcy spends it like she’s earning it.”
“Oh, Doctor Damien, don’t go getting cheap on the wife, as much as she puts up with. She deserves those red bottom shoes.”
Damien laughed and added, “Yeah, I hope Payless comes out with some red bottoms, because this clinic money isn’t Mayor Taylor money.”
“Oh don’t go wishing that on me,” Jamison said. “I just left the one who took everything I owned. Has about 80 percent as we speak.”
“You speak to her about Val?”
“Sure did.”
“Good. What about Coreen? Did you tell her about Coreen?”
“No,” Jamison said, pulling into his driveway. “I don’t think she’s ready for that. I don’t think either of them are.”
“Dog, I told you, the man who speaks first wins. That’s the bottom line. You have to tell Kerry. You have to tell Val, too.”
“I know, but there’s too much shit going on right about now. You know?” Jamison looked up at the house.
“You’re a married man—there’s always shit going on,” Damien said and Jamison laughed with him at the judgment of the institution that had become more of a game of risk for him than anything else. He knew Marcy had gotten pregnant by him so he’d marry her. He actually loved her and wanted to marry her whether she was pregnant or not. But she was coming from the wrong side of the tracks and he wasn’t raised to be the kind of blue blood to cross over. But the baby coming meant he’d had to marry her to save his name from shame. And while sometimes he thought his daughter’s birth was a blessing that allowed him to keep the only woman he’d ever really loved, other times he resented Marcy for what she’d done. He also resented the fact that he couldn’t bring it up without sounding like he hated his daughter. His therapist had said that resentment was why Damien had slept with so many women outside of his marriage—to try to control a relationship he felt was set up to control him. And since Damien didn’t see any way he’d ever stop self-medicating through random sexual exploits that most often resulted in his being caught and a physical altercation with Marcy, the therapist suggested the two get a divorce. That was the last time Damien went to therapy.
“Just talk to them, man,” Damien advised before getting off the phone with Jamison. “You have to start the conversation. Man up.”
“An Ode to Mercy”
Paschal’s was an Atlanta tradition with a solid heart that just wouldn’t stop ticking. The West End soul food citadel, which had seen its height when it was known as a social club and meeting place for civil rights activists and Atlanta’s black who’s who in the 1960s, had become a place where white tourists went for fried chicken and politicians held court to collect big checks from the old guard, but there was still a solid following that took pride in sitting in its history on a Saturday night or seeing church ladies in big pastel hats line up for the infamous buffet on Sunday afternoon.
When Jamison and Val walked in, eyes shifted toward and away from them like they did at family reunions when a beloved uncle walked in with his wretched wife. Some people smiled and nodded, but no one took pictures or walked over to them. That wasn’t the style at Paschal’s. To be there meant you were cool and just not surprised to see who the mayor walked in with on a Sunday night. Only the workers could demonstrate delight at the sight. And, of course, this meant Jamison was led right to the best seat in the house—a table the manager always kept open for such visits.
Val went with sky-blue kitten heels to play it safe, but her feet were already hurting and she kind of fell into her seat to get the pressure off her toes as soon as possible.
“You okay?” Jamison asked.
“It’s my feet. They’re just growing by the minute.” Val wanted to remove the water from the carafe on the table and pour the ice all over the toes that were already nude under the table.
“Is this normal—you know—in the second trimester?” Jamison asked. He didn’t remember Kerry’s feet getting swollen until the very end of her pregnancy with Tyrian.
“The doctor said everyone is different. It could actually go away. Just
depends.”
Jamison watched as Val picked up the menu and went straight to the dessert page as she always did. She loved cake and ice cream, just anything sweet. When they’d first started fooling around he’d noticed she would go entire days eating nothing but sugary sides that indulged her sweet tooth. So often that he wondered how she wasn’t five hundred pounds and being rolled around on a stretcher. She never exercised or even tried to walk from here to there. But still she had a solid body that curved magnificently wherever any man thought it should.
“Can you feel the baby? Like really feel it moving?” Jamison asked.
It was the first time anyone had asked Val anything about the baby. Well, aside from her doctor, whose eyes always seemed just as judgmental as everyone else’s as they rolled over her stomach.
“Yes,” Val said so efficiently. “I mostly feel the baby move when you’re around,” she said, looking into Jamison’s eyes. And he didn’t shift either.
Jamison looked at Val’s belly and another first came—he wanted to touch her stomach. He did. One arm outstretched, he laid his hand atop her stomach. And closed his eyes. And waited.
It was the first time he considered that there was a human inside of Val. A little human that was a part of him. Just like Tyrian. Just like the baby Coreen had carried in her stomach so many miles away from home in Los Angeles.
Just then, some sharp and rude emotion kicked through Jamison’s quiet darkness and he awoke from his listening. He snatched his hand away from Val’s womb and opened his eyes as if his hand had been on a tomb.
“What?” Val responded to the sudden movement. “What happened?”
“Val, I need to tell you something,” Jamison said, looking at Val.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s about the woman I told you about—the one in—”
Jamison’s words stopped when he saw a man approaching the table from behind Val.
“Jamison?” Val called, trying to get him to focus on her again, but his entire countenance was already changing, causing her to turn around to see what had his attention at her back.
As she turned, Jamison was standing and smiling, extending his hand past her breasts.
His Third Wife Page 10